Should You Side With the Cultists or Harpers in the Cursed Shadowlands in Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3)? Answered

Act two will bring you into the Cursed Shadowlands, a pretty tough region with threats everywhere. Progressing one quest will take you down a path that leads to two different outcomes based on a split-second decision. You can either side with the Cultists as they escort you or with the Harpers looking to take them down.

Is It Better to Side With the Cultists or Harpers in BG3?

You arrive at this choice by giving the Spider’s Lyre to Half-Orc Kansif at the cultist encampment in the Cursed Shadowlands (X:95, Y: -53). This will lead to you being escorted by a Drider as Kansif and the cultists follow.

Not long into the journey, your party will roll for Perception and might alert you ahead of time regarding a coming ambush. As you might expect from this moment, Harpers (like Chris Pine from the Dungeons and Dragons movie) step out from the shadows to attack. You are given a quick choice to make, and it might not be an easy one.

Siding With the Harpers

This is most definitely the harder choice. The Drider Kar’niss casts Sanctuary on himself immediately, which makes him immune to all attacks and spells from enemies for a whole turn. He can be wounded by AoE (area of effect) attacks, but it will take a decent amount of time and health to whittle down his massive 128 HP when he keeps applying it.

While in both circumstances, you aren’t alone, Kar’niss dishes out some heavy damage, and you start the fight right next to your now enemies. On the bright side, for winning, you can loot the Cruel Sting rare sword from Kar’niss. When equipped by Karlach, it does a whopping 6-20 damage.

The biggest downside to this fight, once you have won, is that the Harpers take the Moon Lantern that Kar’niss had and leave. Considering you killed your last escort, it’s rough that you don’t get a new escort from them. Instead, they mark on your map where to meet them and are left to fend for yourselves.

Siding With the Cultists

As the Harpers are well set up in the dilapidated house, they have the prime positioning for ranged attacks. This is bad news for your side as most of the Harpers will be entirely out of range, and it’s not worth the risk of charging in after them. This results in a more drawn-out fight, but they don’t have any huge attacks available.

On the other hand, the cultists are more likely to hand out heals to your party. Though it seemed the Harpers were more likely to target cultists with their attacks, so healing wasn’t a large priority.

With the battle won, the Harpers weren’t carrying any loot truly worth taking, so you might as well just tell Kar’niss you are ready to move on.

Conclusion

Either option gets you through to the next part of the story, so it’s entirely up to you. If you’ve been doubling down on the True Soul aspect of the story, there’s no reason not to keep up appearances and go with the cultists. However, if you’ve been mostly slaying them, Moonrise might be a tough place to end up at the moment.

With this information in mind, it helps to be prepared when the moment with the cultsts and Harpers comes. For more help with the many tricky situations in Baldur’s Gate 3, check out our links below.